Seagate ES from china: Bad bad bad

[Arno Wagner]

I just bought a 400GB Seagate ES drive. When it arrived, it was not in
the usual Seashell, but in an ESD bag. It also had a big sticker
"Made in China". Alarmed by this, I had a closer look and found that
the creamic casing of the crystal on the PCB was shattered. The
missing parts were not in the bag, so this was done pre-packaging.
Also, shattering these things takes massive force.

For such an obvious problem to have passed Q/A basically means that
the Q/A done is worthless. I would advise everybody to stay away from
these drives.

Arno

 

[DaveH]

I just bought a 400GB Seagate ES drive. When it arrived, it was not in
the usual Seashell, but in an ESD bag. It also had a big sticker
"Made in China". Alarmed by this, I had a closer look and found that
the creamic casing of the crystal on the PCB was shattered. The
missing parts were not in the bag, so this was done pre-packaging.
Also, shattering these things takes massive force.

For such an obvious problem to have passed Q/A basically means that
the Q/A done is worthless. I would advise everybody to stay away from
these drives.

Arno

Arno,
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but are your recommending
avoiding that specific drive, or Seagate in general?

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno,
Forgive me if this is a stupid question, but are your recommending
avoiding that specific drive, or Seagate in general?

Well, I don't quite know. At the moment this seems to indicate
avoiding Seagate drives made in China. And also that at least some
if the ES drives (Enterprise Storage, obviously a joke) are made in
China.

Arno

 

[Paul Rubin]

Well, I don't quite know. At the moment this seems to indicate
avoiding Seagate drives made in China. And also that at least some
if the ES drives (Enterprise Storage, obviously a joke) are made in China.

That is weird, that the packaging changed and so forth. Could it have
been a counterfeit drive or one repackaged by some dealer?

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Well, I don't quite know. At the moment this seems to indicate
avoiding Seagate drives made in China. And also that at least some
if the ES drives (Enterprise Storage, obviously a joke) are made in
China.

There are *numerous* problems with drives from China, failed heads being
the most prominent, followed by seized bearings.

Their laptop drives manufactured in China with firmware 7.01 are also
disastrously unreliable.

Clearly Seagate are manufacturing to a price by using China, and I think
it's going to ruin their reputation. First associating themselves with
the Maxtor brand, and now Chinese failures.


Odie

 

[Rod Speed]

There are *numerous* problems with drives from China, failed heads
being the most prominent, followed by seized bearings.

Their laptop drives manufactured in China with firmware 7.01 are also
disastrously unreliable.

Clearly Seagate are manufacturing to a price by using China, and I
think it's going to ruin their reputation. First associating
themselves with the Maxtor brand, and now Chinese failures.

Yeah, looks suspiciously like some fool beancounter is driving Seagate into the ground.

 

[Fred]

Like only the Chinese knock Xtals off, you Swiss Chauvinist Pig.

Like anything coming from the Chinas is a joke, eh Babblebot.
Better give your mainboard, video card, harddisk controller
and what else have you the boot then too, before they bite you.
Go live in a museum. Or a mausoleum, in your case.

That is weird, that the packaging changed and so forth. Could it
have been a counterfeit drive or one repackaged by some dealer?

You *do* know you are talking to the braindead attention starved Babblebot Idjut, don't you, Rubin?

It's obviously not Seagate's fault when one buys from some Ebay
broker flogging off leftover OEM drives.

 

[Mike Tomlinson]

Clearly Seagate are manufacturing to a price by using China, and I think
it's going to ruin their reputation. First associating themselves with
the Maxtor brand, and now Chinese failures.

Wonderful. So what's the nest choice now? Hitachi? The Deskstars seem
to be rather good at the moment.

 

[DaveH]

Wonderful. So what's the nest choice now? Hitachi? The Deskstars seem
to be rather good at the moment.

Right--same question.

I assume Maxtor is out. WD, Samsung? This is ridiculous.
I've never had a Maxtor fail, but sounds like the current ones are
garbage.
Dave

 

[Rod Speed]

Wonderful. So what's the nest choice now?

I've never been into shitting in the nest, but the best choice is samsung
IMO. Nice and quiet and on the low end power and temp wise.

Hitachi? The Deskstars seem to be rather good at the moment.

I dont care for their warranty claim system personally and
they arent as quiet and as cool running as the samsungs.

 

[Banana Peels]

the creamic casing of the crystal on the PCB was shattered.

What is a "creamic casing of the crystal on the PCB?" Can you take a
picture and post a link? I've been looking at the Barracuda 7200.10 series
drives, SATA2, 16MB buffer. Where are they made and do they have the
crystal on a PCB?

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Wonderful. So what's the nest choice now? Hitachi? The Deskstars seem
to be rather good at the moment.

A non-Chinese-manufactured Seagate or latest Hitachis.

With the Hitachis there have been some mutterings about problems with
their smaller (250GB) drives, so I'd be inclined to go for a 400GB or
larger.


Odie

 

[Arno Wagner]

What is a "creamic casing of the crystal on the PCB?" Can you take a
picture and post a link? I've been looking at the Barracuda 7200.10 series
drives, SATA2, 16MB buffer. Where are they made and do they have the
crystal on a PCB?

I have no idea on how to find out where a Seagate drive has been
manufactured, other than buying it. The label on the top lists the
place of manufacture. And yes, all HDDs have a crystal on the
PCB. Nothing else gives the required precise timing at reasonable
cost.

I have uploaded some pictures to image shack:

This shows the broken crystal casing:

http://img113.imageshack.us/img113/7703/img1056nb5.gif

And here is what the thing should look like from another disk:

http://img441.imageshack.us/img441/1386/img1062zv4.gif


Arno

 

[Banana Peels]

Arno,

Thanks for posting links to pictures. I doubt the PCB and crystal were
subject to shock after assembly. It's possible something came off in the
solder bath. Have you actually tried to use the drive, your post never
said if the drive worked or not. I've seen drives packed in the Seagate
clamshell and regular anti-static bags. Not sure if yours coming without a
hard shell is significant either.

According to the Seagate website, they offer the Barracuda ES drive, 400GB,
with either an 8 or 16MB buffer. And it has a 3.0Gb/s interface, which may
be another way of saying SATA2. The Barracuda 7200.10 Desktop Storage
series drives have the same specs, so it's not clear what the difference is
between the enterprise and desktop products.

 

[Odie Ferrous]

Arno,

Thanks for posting links to pictures. I doubt the PCB and crystal were
subject to shock after assembly. It's possible something came off in the
solder bath. Have you actually tried to use the drive, your post never
said if the drive worked or not. I've seen drives packed in the Seagate
clamshell and regular anti-static bags. Not sure if yours coming without a
hard shell is significant either.

According to the Seagate website, they offer the Barracuda ES drive, 400GB,
with either an 8 or 16MB buffer. And it has a 3.0Gb/s interface, which may
be another way of saying SATA2. The Barracuda 7200.10 Desktop Storage
series drives have the same specs, so it's not clear what the difference is
between the enterprise and desktop products.

That chip has been knocked - and very hard.

It most certainly does not show any characteristics of having been a
victim of post manufacture soldering issues - it has been simply been
very badly physically damaged. (Note - the soldering points appear
intact.)


Odie

 

[Arno Wagner]

Arno,

Thanks for posting links to pictures. I doubt the PCB and crystal were
subject to shock after assembly. It's possible something came off in the
solder bath. Have you actually tried to use the drive, your post never
said if the drive worked or not. I've seen drives packed in the Seagate
clamshell and regular anti-static bags. Not sure if yours coming without a
hard shell is significant either.

I did not try it. I expect it would actually work, but only for a time.
One problem is atht crystalls are mechanically very delicate. Another is
that the contacts are typically silver and will change to silver sulfide,
which has significantly different properties from silver. Thsi should
at the least de-tune the crystal to some degree.

I agree that this likely did not happen post-assembly. Which makes
my harsh judgement of bad Q/A even more serious. A simple visual
inspection of the assembled product, whether with eyeball mark I or
automated with camera should have caught this reliably.

I don't think the anti-static bag is an indicator. I checked the warranty
on the drive today and it is the regular 5 year one. I think this is
a regular drive.

According to the Seagate website, they offer the Barracuda ES drive,
400GB, with either an 8 or 16MB buffer. And it has a 3.0Gb/s
interface, which may be another way of saying SATA2. The Barracuda
7200.10 Desktop Storage series drives have the same specs, so it's
not clear what the difference is between the enterprise and desktop
products.

The ES drives are supposed to have less vibration and also have
an ATA command set extension which allows to tone down the
error correction for RAID usage with controllers that tollerate
read errors better than unresponsive drives. A bit of what WD did
with a special drive series.

Arno

 

[Rod Speed]

Banana Peels wrote

That chip has been knocked - and very hard.

You dont know that. The top could just have come off due to lousy quality control.

It most certainly does not show any characteristics of having
been a victim of post manufacture soldering issues
Correct.

- it has been simply been very badly physically damaged.

You dont know that.

(Note - the soldering points appear intact.)

And that is unlikely if it had been very badly physically damaged.

Its MUCH more likely that the top came off and no one noticed that lying around etc.

 

[Arno Wagner]

That chip has been knocked - and very hard.

It most certainly does not show any characteristics of having been a
victim of post manufacture soldering issues - it has been simply been
very badly physically damaged.

I agree.

(Note - the soldering points appear intact.)

They are. I looked at this with an 8x magnifier (shows much better
detail than the photograph) and I have several decades soldering
experience (as a hobbyist). There is no PCB damage at all and the
soldering on the crystal is the original soldering of the complete
PCB. Also the ESD-bag has not markings in the place of the crystal
and no fragments were in the bag.

Actually the only explanation I can see how this slipped through
Q/A is that it was intentionally let through. Maybe somebody
eager to demonstrate that they could manufacture with a small
rate of drives that fail Q/A. Of course this would be exactly the
wrong thing to do.

Arno

 

[zappo]

I agree.


They are. I looked at this with an 8x magnifier (shows much better
detail than the photograph) and I have several decades soldering
experience (as a hobbyist). There is no PCB damage at all and the
soldering on the crystal is the original soldering of the complete
PCB. Also the ESD-bag has not markings in the place of the crystal
and no fragments were in the bag.

Actually the only explanation I can see how this slipped
through Q/A is that it was intentionally let through.

Thats silly. The top obviously came off in a situation where its presence
separate from the drive wasnt noticed, before it got into the bag.

Maybe somebody eager to demonstrate that they could
manufacture with a small rate of drives that fail Q/A.

Completely off with the fairys.

 

[John Turco]

Like only the Chinese knock Xtals off, you Swiss Chauvinist Pig.


Like anything coming from the Chinas is a joke, eh Babblebot.
Better give your mainboard, video card, harddisk controller
and what else have you the boot then too, before they bite you.
Go live in a museum. Or a mausoleum, in your case.

<edited, for brevity>

Hello, Folkert:

If, by "Chinas," your're including tiny Taiwan, along with its huge,
communist counterpart, your're quite correct.

For example, over 80% of all current notebook computers are made in
Taiwan, regardless of brand!


Cordially,
John Turco <[email protected]>